Politics

If this year was about anything it surely had something to do with a historic election. An election and the thousand stories wound up inside, some interesting and relevant, some entirely useless, kept most of us wholly occupied for the majority of the year. There was just so much goodness: pants suits and shopping sprees, bowling scores and "bitter" people, a team of mavericks a

From prostitutes to Ponzi schemes, this wasn't a great year for Jewish politicians or notable persons. In fact, if a Jew was in the news it was probably a bad thing, but I guess that doesn't exactly set 2008 aside as anything special. What did make it special was the amazingly ferocious idiocy and unmitigated disasters that kept these guys in the corners with their yarmu

Ahh, the holidays in NYC. Maybe I should rephrase this and say “Ahh, Christmas in NYC” because, let’s face it, no one gives a shit about Hanukah and, being a Jew, I am trying to talk myself into thinking that other people are still celebrating Hanukah these days (or at least acknowledging it). There are few things better this time of year than strolling around my favorite neighborhoods in downtown NYC: Soho, Nolita, and the West Village (basically anywhere below 14th street). How silly of me to think that people have not found out about the great food, shops, culture and beautiful architecture that these downtown neighborhoods possess, especially tourists.

Have you ever had one of those watershed weekends where absolutely nothing happened, yet the whole time was filled up and you came out the other end completely exhausted? It's a rare breed of weekend to be sure, but sometimes it happens. Sports, movies, and drinking all came together to create this amazing amalgam of time wasted and time spent living properly, or at least appropriately. But, in fitting fashion for the late-twenties malaise in which I find myself mired, nothing coherently gel;, it's just a collection of rants and raves.

I really want to love Pandora Radio. It's such a seductive concept: type in the name of your favorite artist or song and she'll analyze it using the Music Gnome Project. Her sophisticated algorithms will create a customized radio station that plays only songs you're sure to love as well. Just as the original Pandora introduced the world to the joys of avarice, contempt, rage and despair, Pandora Radio promises to unleash a whole new world of sonic possibility.

Even though few of my friends still find it relevant enough to watch hung over on a Sunday morning, I still find myself looking forward to Saturday Night Live nearly every week. Maybe I'm just a sucker for sketch comedy, maybe it's just that I can't abide all the Sunday morning NFL talk. Either way, the Republican VP candidate's appearance last Saturday was enough to get that Nielsen rating up by a couple million viewers, so apparently I wasn't alone in watching this particular broadcast. And two questions were the inevitable result of that: how did Palin do, and how did SNL do?

If you ask me, and I know you didn't, I say that SNL did the best they could. But as usual, that's only half the story.

If that really is your name? Voter? How have you still not made a decision about who you're going to vote for in this Presidential Election? What the shit? You're aware that there's an election going on, right? You're not that self-absorbed are you?

Do you feel you haven't had enough time to gather all the information on this subject? I often take 20 months to make a decision myself. Seriously though, what's with you?

One of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld is called "The Marble Rye." In case you don't remember it by name, here's what happens at the crux of the episode and, not coincidentally, my favorite part. George is waiting outside the Ross' townhouse (the parents of his ill-fated fiancée Susan) for Kramer to show up and take them for a handsome cab ride around the park so that George can return to the Ross' cabinet the marble rye that his parents took back after it wasn't served at dinner the night before. I'm sure it's all coming back to you now. As George is waiting outside, he has a panic attack in his head and wonders how he could have relied on Kramer at the heart of his plan; the plan seemed brilliant except for the part about Kramer being integral to it's success, and he couldn't see that until it was all blowing up in his face. He knows then the whole thing will turn out disastrously, though of course not as he expects, standing at the window with the marble rye in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. But that's not important right now. What is important is that I had that same panic attack last week.

Last night I had the pleasure of going to the closing night film of the New York Film Festival which was Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. The movie is about an aging professional wrestler, a guy who was a big star in the 80's and is now grappling with the realities of what his life has become. The event itse